


Mercy

by Sheeana



Category: Dune Series - Frank Herbert
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Imprisonment, M/M, Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 08:42:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/607950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheeana/pseuds/Sheeana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Tell me, Harkonnen. Why do you think I spared your life?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mercy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Greekhoop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greekhoop/gifts).



> I very much liked your Dune prompts (and wish I had more time, because I also love The Master and Margarita), and so I wrote you this treat. Happy Yuletide!

Feyd-Rautha knelt in the exact center of the stone floor in his room. Seventeen lengths of his own foot to the right wall, seventeen to the left, seventeen to the window, seventeen to the door. He'd had more than enough time to count them with precision in the months since his imprisonment.

Paul Atreides circled him. He moved like one of the great cats of Giedi Prime, before they'd been hunted to extinction by Feyd's ancestors. He'd seen holographs of them. The Baron used to call Feyd a cat, a creature of the night who moved silently and killed with deadly precision. Even Paul's eyes held the same glint as those of a cat - deadly, predatory. 

"Tell me, Harkonnen. What do you think you are?" Paul asked, finally, when he'd finished his circling. He put emphasis on the name - _Harkonnen._ The oldest enmities, the Baron once told Feyd, were the enmities of the blood. Enmities of circumstance changed with time. Enmities of blood endured when all else had faded away. People died, but blood remembered. Planets became desiccated and lifeless before blood forgot.

If this was a test Paul was giving him, Feyd couldn't decide if he wanted to pass or fail. He chose truth - maybe it would put Paul off his guard. "Why, I'm a caged creature, waiting for its master's whim."

"Everyone is caged. Most don't know it yet, but they are."

"Even you?"

"More than anyone," Paul said, and it sounded like honesty.

"How can an emperor be caged?"

"You're so small, and so blind. You can't even perceive your own blindness. You only see what is directly in front of you." Again, Paul's words seemed like the truth, and Feyd wondered if this, too, was meant to leave him feeling unsettled and off-balance. If that was Paul's intention, it was working, but Feyd was determined not to let it show.

"You should have killed me when you had the chance," he said, with bitterness he couldn't conceal.

"Do you think," Paul said, leaning in close with a tight-lipped smile, "That I lost my chance the day I took the throne?"

Feyd spat on the floor before him, but Paul only laughed, and laughed, and kept laughing. At first Feyd thought he must have finally gone completely mad, after balancing on the brink of it for so long. Then he remembered. The Fremen thought spit was a sacred thing. He just gave Paul Atreides the gift of his body's water. Shame flooded into him, as deep as shame could go, seeking out all the tiny crevices within him until it filled him, but he held his head high and looked into Paul's blue-blue eyes with defiance.

Still mad with laughter, Paul fell to his knees before Feyd. With the tip of his finger, he pulled the collar of Feyd's shirt aside to reveal a long, thin scar along his neck and upper chest - the mark of the crysknife. Along the whitened line of Feyd's skin, Paul drew a line with his fingertip, as if trying to reopen the wound without a blade.

"The Fremen have a saying about wounds made by the blade of a crysknife."

"The Fremen have all sorts of sayings. They're barely more than animals, living in their caves-"

"I could kill you right now, and not a single person would find fault in it."

"You could. But you won't. You haven't yet, and as you said, you still can anytime you want. If you haven't, then you must have a purpose for me."

"A bold assumption on which to bet your life."

"What have I left to lose? My dignity? My family name? My freedom? You've taken those already."

"What dignity has a Harkonnen?" Paul shouted, and then Feyd remembered, once more: blood enmity. This was punishment for the sins of a hundred generations of his ancestors, doled out by the last Atreides son. Their positions could have been reversed and Feyd would have done the same, and he would have been motivated by the same blind need to fulfill the task of his forefathers. If he'd had the inclination towards philosophy, he might have wondered what purpose any of this served. Thankfully, he'd never felt that urge.

"Enough dignity to end a life when we take what we're owed," he said. Snapping a neck, putting a projectile through a brain - those were merciful acts. Keeping a man alive as a caged creature, a slave like all the slaves whose lives Feyd had mercifully ended - this wasn't mercy. This was cruelty in a tangible form.

"Why do you think I spared your life?" Paul asked. He was on his feet again. He resumed circling.

"Why should I know anything about what you think?"

"We're alike, you and I."

"Then I'm grateful for your mercy," Feyd said, with mock-sincerity, and he spat again on the floor. The moisture lingered there, even in the dry air. The inner rooms of the imperial palace were kept cool by the thick stone walls and floors. This time Paul didn't laugh. He moved forward until Feyd could smell the cinnamon scent of spice on his robes, could sense the thrill running through him. This was thrilling for Paul. And how could it not be? Feyd must have made an enticing sight, on his knees on the stone floor of Paul's desert palace. He closed his eyes for a moment and imagined Paul on his knees before him on the red-black polished marble floors of the Harkonnen castle on Giedi Prime, and he felt a shiver of excitement himself at the notion of the last of the Atreides kneeling to a Harkonnen.

With a barely-restrained trembling hand, Paul reached out to part Feyd's shirt again. His finger traced another line down Feyd's scar, pressing in against the raised skin where it was numb to touch and pain and heat. 

"This is not mercy. Remember that." For a moment that seemed to stretch on and on into infinite thinness, Paul stared at Feyd, silent after his remark. Then he turned and left.

Feyd was mercifully alone again.


End file.
